


Middle Distance Runner

by howardently



Category: My Mad Fat Diary
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-17
Updated: 2015-06-17
Packaged: 2018-04-04 19:19:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4149750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/howardently/pseuds/howardently
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rae's going away to University.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Middle Distance Runner

**_Tonight, we could pretend that we’re just lovers._ **

The weekend before she’s to go away, they get a hotel room.

It’s a big deal. He’s got to borrow a credit card from his Dad, she has to admit to her Mum what’s really going on. Gary and Linda have forged an unlikely friendship over the last year, primarily to ensure a unified front against the wiles of their children. Rae thinks that if this is what it’s like to have a proper Dad, always around to thwart your plans, then she’s been better off.

She hugs Gary around the middle later that afternoon, guilty and ashamed of her traitorous thought. All these years of no father, and now she’s got two men in her life to boss her around and get into all her business. She loves it, loves them, but still.

The hotel room is like announcing to everyone that they are officially having sex. They’ve been having sex for over a year, but having everyone so involved in the process is like handing out little cards-  _Here, Mr. Postman, Finn and I are fucking. Oh, hello Mrs. Dewhurst, yes I am finally getting laid. Oh, go ahead Chopper, do your worst, now you’ve got confirmation that Finn’s slipping me one._

It’s very frustrating. But it’s also sort of liberating. She’s leaving for uni in three days, finally leaving Stamford and going out into the world on her own. But it’s this, checking into a hotel room with Finn, half-hidden behind his shoulder as he hands over a borrowed credit card that really drives it home. She’s an adult now.

Once they’re in the room, they giggle nervously, opening the mini bar and shaking their heads in awed horror at the expense of the treats contained inside. It’s weird, uncomfortable almost. This room, it’s  _just_  for having sex in. There’s no other agenda, just shagging. Something about the baldness of it makes her stumble, makes it feel like that first time again, the almost first time, when she couldn’t stop her shaking as his fingers fumbled with her shirt. She shudders as she tests the bounciness of the bed.

Finn’s dropped their bag onto the luggage rack in the closet and now he pulls out a bottle of cheap champagne. He grins as he turns to face her, one hand gripping the green neck of the bottle. She laughs, relaxing slightly. Booze always helps. He peels the foil off while she unwraps the plastic cups from the bathroom. She watches him struggle with the cork and wonders if this is what her adult life will be like, stolen nights in transient rooms with warm champagne and Finn. Seems a pretty good lot, all things considered.

He gets the cork popped, and they both laugh as the bubbles stream out and over his hand. He holds it up in the air, and she reaches forward to catch the liquid dripping from his fist with her tongue. He’s salty and sweet and tangy and the previously unnoticed tightness in her stomach eases a bit. It’s just them; adults or not, they’re just Rae and Finn. It’s okay.

He pours two generous sloshes into the flimsy cups and sets the bottle on the scuffed dresser beside the door. Rae moves as he moves, and she thinks about how they balance each other so easily, how he’s become her counterweight in the world. A pang of loneliness grips her unexpectedly; how’s she ever supposed to manage without him? Less than a week, and she’ll be on her own. Really on her own, with no Finn there to even her out.

“What should we toast to?” He asks, and she raises sad eyes to take him in. His body bows in towards hers automatically now. She wonders if that will go away when they’re not together as much.

“To the end of another magical summer.” She sighs. The end, it’s the end.

“No,” Finn’s eyebrows are drawn together. He tilts her face up with his knuckle, runs his thumb along its familiar track down the side of her face. “Let’s toast to you, to the beginning of your future.”

She smiles, but it feels like she’s splintering. To her, to her future. Not to them. A great weight settles over her, like a huge crow swooping in from the west to take residence in her chest and peck wearily at her organs. She’s been doing her best not to think about it, not to let the fear and uncertainty get the best of her. But he does this, talks about her future, her prospects, her great life. And she knows, realistically, that he loves her and he plans to be beside her for all those things, a part of all her hers.

But she knows, realistically too, that she’ll probably ruin it. Like she’s ruining tonight.

“To  _our_  future, then.” She says, forcing a smile and raising her cup.

“To our future.”

Finn grins like he’s never envisioned a future where they aren’t together and presses his cup against hers. The plastic is so flimsy that the pressure of his fingers bends it in, sloshing some of the champagne over her hand. She feels better, somehow, with the sticky wine on her hand too. Like they’re bound, like they’re anointed by this cheap champagne in this cheap hotel room in this cheap town into what will undoubtedly be a cheap future. But she doesn’t care, as long as it’s theirs.

They each take a generous sip, and Rae can’t help but make a face of disgust. Finn sputters, laughs at her disdain. “I’ve never had champagne before. And I’m guessing you haven’t either. It’s terrible.”

“It was such a nice idea.” She says. “So grown up and romantic of us. But fuck’s sake, if you have to drink this to be an adult, I’ll pass.”

“Shall we go find a pub?” Finn asks, eyes sparkling in that way she loves, the way that means he finds her delightful.

“God yes. I dunno what we were thinking we’d do in here all night anyway. It’s only half seven.”

“Well, see Rae, when a man and a woman love each other very much, sometimes…”

“Oh shut up.” She rolls her eyes, but she’s cheered. It’ll always be like this, right? It has to always be like this.

—

The room is dim, and her skin is clammy and cold as her sweat dries in the open air. She’s snugged up against him, his arm curled around her shoulders in its familiar spot, one of hers tucked between their bodies and the other thrown over his chest. It’s normal, this is the way they best fit together, skin to skin, sticky and flushed and warm where their bodies connect. But it’s new too, to languish in the freedom. To keep the sheets flung back at the foot of the bed, for him to skim his fingers up and down her bare back until she shivers. To not have the weight in the air of needing to get up, cover up, move on before they’re caught.

Her buzz has worn off, and she wonders what will happen now. Will they fall asleep like this? Will they whisper sweet nothings, careless and careful promises into the navy darkness? Will they doze and wake up for a second dreamy round of lovemaking? Will they move to separate sides of the bed?

They’ve slept together a few times, but only a few and far between, and usually they’re pissed out of their minds or sharing a tent with half a dozen other people, so there’s no precedent for this, no book to show her how it’s supposed to go. She thinks about that a lot, wishing for a manual for how to work her life. But it’s Finn, and he makes the guessing fun, so she snuggles closer.

The air conditioner over the window turns on, and Finn reaches down to pull the blankets over them. Rae curls onto her side, clutches the pillow under her head, tucks up her legs a little. She feels overheated where she was touching him, icy everywhere else. She shivers as his fingers draw the scratchy fabric over her shoulder. He settles beside her on his side, facing her, and uses an arm to tug her closer until her legs tangle in his. He leaves the arm heavy over her side.

“Rae.” He says, and she studies the way a narrow triangle of amber light escapes the barricade of the curtains and illuminates part of his face and neck.

“Yeah?” She whispers. Then she remembers that she doesn’t have to, doesn’t have keep them a secret tonight. “Yeah?” She says more firmly, and he smiles like he knows what she’s thinking.

His eyes glide over her face with an almost visceral pull. They turn sad, and she feels an answering pinch, the crow settling further into the softness of her belly. Finn reaches out a hand and touches her; eyelids, lips, jaw, neck, collarbones, shoulder. Rae makes a sound that she doesn’t recognize.

“I’m going to miss you so much.”

It’s forbidden territory, and she feels her eyes fill with tears. They don’t talk about how it will hurt, they don’t talk about the way their bones will ache without the other. They’ve both been relentlessly cheerful about her going, about all the opportunities and classes and _fun_  she’ll have. They didn’t discuss the plan to stay positive, either. It’s just been a given since the day the scholarship papers arrived in the mail. Her going is a good thing,  _the_  good thing. And they don’t talk about any of the bad stuff at all.

A tear drizzles over her nose and into the starchy cotton of the hotel pillowcase, and she suddenly understands. This is what they’ve gotten a room for; not for sex, for the real kind of talking. This is what being an adult is, and she’s pretty sure she doesn’t want it.

“I’m going to miss you too.” It’s a whisper again, and she reaches to touch him. They have to connect now however they can. She shifts until her belly presses up against his, wraps her calf tighter against his, keeps all five fingers on his skin.

“I know it’s good you’re going. I’m happy for you. I’m so proud,” Finn’s voice gets lower and tighter, and his eyes are watery. His palm flattens against her back. “But. But.”

Rae nods, her heart breaking for him.

“I don’t want you to go.” Tears fall, and he shakes his head. She expects him to look away, to roll his eyes towards the ceiling and hide his pain, but he doesn’t. He keeps his eyes on hers. She brushes a tear with her thumb, spreading the warmth until it’s a cool strip of skin.

“I know.” She murmurs, trying to soothe, trying not to lie. She knows she should say she doesn’t want to go either, but she does. She wants to go more than anything.

“I don’t want you to leave me. I’m scared that you’re going to go away and find someone new and I won’t be enough for you anymore.”

“Oh, Finn. Never.”

“What if you forget me? What if you find some brilliant bloke to talk to you about books and philosophy and you fall in love with him?” He continues, and she can tell that these are questions that have built up within him and just now allowed to spill out, like the tears now streaming down his face. He pulls his hand off of her back to brush at them in irritation, and when he returns it to her skin, it’s damp. “How am I supposed to do without your smile, without your laugh? How will I manage without seeing you every day? I’m terrified, Rae. I’m so scared to be without you.”

“Shhhh. Shhh.” She pulls his head down to her chest, wraps her arms around him and kisses his hair over and over and over again. She feels like she’s a hundred stone, like they’ll have to bring a forklift to get her out of this bed, so heavy is her heart. There’s nothing she can tell him, no way to make it better. Because she worries about all those things too.

“I don’t know if I can be away from you.” She says, and it’s a terrible confession, because this is the heart of the matter, this is the thing that’s been eating away at her all this time in secret. She’s afraid, deeply, deeply afraid that she won’t be able to  _be_  without him, that as soon as his train zips back and he’s out of sight and she’s alone in that scary new place, she’ll dissolve.

There’s a part of her, even after all those sessions with Kester, even after all the therapy and positive self talk, that honestly believes that Finn is the very best of her. That believes that he is the thing that keeps her whole in the face of everything else. This last year has sunk him so deeply into her, into her very marrow, and she’s really scared that without him she’ll be too hollow to hold together.

And even worse, she doesn’t know if  _they_  can be. She doesn’t know if they’ll be able to maintain across the distance, without being able to hold on to one another with their clutching hands and grabbing fingers. It’s the biggest secret, the biggest shame that she’s got: she’s pretty sure that when they’re not together, they’re going to fall apart. She’s pretty sure that without him, she’s not going to be enough to hold on to him.

Now it’s Finn who’s brushing away her tears, and murmuring soothing nonsense against her hair as she cries into his chest.

“It’ll be okay, Rae. We’ll be okay. You’ll be okay.” He says, over and over. When she gets control of the crying, she writes it on his chest with a finger. O-K.

She knows she should tell him, knows that the stillness in this quiet, dim room is meant for the soft spread of secrets between lovers. She knows she should admit it all, tell him how afraid she is that she’s going to be the end of them. She knows she should whisper to him to let out all his secrets too, to use this ambiguous place as a confessional so she can absolve him of all his fears.

It’s the mature thing to do.

Her finger trails more shapes against his skin, dips lower and lower until his breath catches in his throat and his hands clench over her softness. She can’t stand the silence, can’t stand the pressure of what she should do. So she changes the air with a breathy sigh, and moves over him.

They should connect as much as possible while they still can.

—

**_Tonight, let’s not talk about next summer._ **

He’s got a surprise, he says. A big surprise for when she comes home for winter break. She can hear the smile in his voice every time he talks about it; he’s got no doubt that she’s going to be thrilled.

She’s less sure.

Actually, she’s terrified. Because she’s got a sneaking, ugly suspicion that it’s an engagement ring. And that makes her stomach curl and twist with dread. And then guilt, and confusion, and more dread. She has a reoccurring nightmare where a dead-eyed Finn smiles at her from behind a jewelry store counter, blood pouring steadily from his grinning mouth.

Some nights, she thinks about ringing Kester, though she hasn’t been in therapy for almost a year.

The semester has been long and more difficult than she’d ever imagined it could be. The first few weeks were expectedly hard and lonely as she’d struggled to meet people and get her footing. It didn’t take long, though, for her to settle in to her new life in Manchester. She’d made new friends, she’d found a decent pub, she’d gotten bold enough to answer questions in class. She’d been proud of how quickly she’d gotten the university situation under control.

But she wasn’t prepared for the way the loneliness and longing for Finn only grew and grew, seemingly in proportion to her comfort at school. The more normal she felt at Uni, the worse she felt about them. It’s a betrayal, she thinks, that she’s mostly just happy here. It’s a betrayal that she’s not curled up in her bed, crying as she clutches the phone. It’s a betrayal that she doesn’t want to come home for long weekends.

Sometimes she makes excuses to stay- a big exam to study for, a paper that must be written, an extra shift at the shop where works- when she really doesn’t need to. It just seems easier to stay and miss him from Manchester than to bother with the emotional strain of coming home and leaving again. It’s exhausting: the fizziness of seeing him again, the constant ticking of the clock always looming over them, the tearful goodbyes. She loves him, she loves him so much, but it’s so hard to see him right now.

How can she tell him she’s tired of wanting him, tired of missing him so much? How can she explain that the emotional strain of loving him like this- from so far away, in great spurts and empty hours- is draining? It’s impossible and everything hurts, so as the semester wears on, she calls just a little bit less, sends the agreed upon letters just a little less frequently. Not enough for him to notice hopefully, but enough to lessen the pressure.

So by the time her train pulls into the station and she sees him, holding a balloon and a sign with her name on it, everything is tinted with exhaustion and guilt in her head. He’s effervescent, nearly giddy with elation as he drops the sign and wraps her up in his strong arms, lifting her toes a couple of inches off the ground. She laughs through the kiss he presses on her, and with his hands flat on her back and his nose brushing hers, it feels for minute like everything might just be okay. Most of the dread and confusion and fear fizzles away when his arms are around her, and since she’s home for two weeks, her always-impending departure doesn’t seem so heavy. Maybe this time it will all feel normal again.

“Alright girl?” He asks, smiling and running his thumbs and eyes over her skin. “God, it’s good to see you.”

She kisses him again, soft and careless. Then again, warm and slow. She’d nearly forgotten what he tasted like, how addicting he is. She thinks it’s technically only one more kiss, three’s acceptable in a train station. But it goes on and on until Finn breaks away with a flush on his cheeks.

“Right then.” He says, clearing his throat and bending to pick up her bag and his discarded sign. Rae watches him move, and for a second it’s like watching a stranger, like she’s never seen him bend before. “I have a surprise for you.”

He’s smiling, twinkling, so happy and she feels doubly guilty for the dread that settles heavily over her once more. She forces her face to stay carefully blank. He doesn’t notice. “Oh yeah? What’s the surprise?”

 _Please don’t let him propose._  She begs, to anything that will listen.  _I can’t handle it. I can’t handle it._

“You’ll just have to wait and see.” He says, still grinning wildly. He holds out his hand, and she finds herself staring dumbly at it: his big open palm, his thick stained fingers. For a second that lasts a year, she thinks she might break down. But then he ducks his head into her vision, his smile open and affectionate and inviting and it passes. It’s just his hand, just Finn’s hand.

She tucks her palm against his and he leads her out.

—

They’re definitely not going to his Dad’s, nor her Mum’s, that much is clear. She keeps asking where they’re going, what the surprise is, but he only grins, lips closed around his secret. She wants to plead with him, wants him to lay it out there. She needs to know, it’s not cute anymore. The uncertainty is making her gut churn, and the bigger his smile gets, the worse she feels.

She tries to picture it in her head, Finn down on one knee, the gooey look he gets on his face when he’s being romantic. She can get that much down, it’s the her part she can’t picture. What will she say? The Rae in her head freezes entirely, turns to ice. No smiling, no stammering even. Just motionless, emotionless, tinted blue.

He pulls the car into a parking lot, and she stays in her seat, examining the tall gray building before her through the rapidly fogging glass. She hears Finn open the boot and remove her luggage, but she doesn’t even unbuckle her seatbelt. Maybe she’ll turn to ice if she stays in the car all night. Panic claws further up her chest.

He’s so fucking happy when he opens the door, and she finds herself irrationally angry. Shouldn’t he be nervous? It’s not a given that she’ll say yes. He should be at least a little worried.

He holds out his hand again, and she fumbles at the buckle with numb fingers before letting him help her out of the car. All her words are stuck in the cloying fear that’s gripped her, so they enter the building in silence. His head is down as he leads her up a staircase, but his eyebrows are high. She swallows the bile rising in her throat.

_Please don’t let him propose. Please don’t let me throw up._

Third floor, they exit the stairwell and Finn leads her down a pale yellow hallway lined with identical doors. And suddenly, she gets it. She lets out a heavy breath, allows herself a small smile. He stops in front of a door, 305, and takes his keys out of his pocket. He shakes them twice before picking one, a gesture so familiar and forgotten that she finds herself pressing a palm against her chest. He turns the key in the knob, then spins to shoot her a smile before opening the door.

Rae wanders into the flat, relief making her feel weightless and heady. Behind her, she can hear Finn closing the door and setting her suitcase on the floor, but it seems distant and irrelevant. She runs her eyes over an unfamiliar blue tartan sofa, smiles in recognition at the carefully organized crates of records. She looks at Finn over her shoulder, and he smiles and nudges her forward with his chin. She shrugs out of her jacket and lays it over the back of an armchair to her right, then wanders into the room to let her fingers trace the spines in his bookshelf and test the softness of the pillows on the couch.

The posters on the wall are welcoming, the same ones that look back on her from her dorm room. There’s a framed photo of the two of them on the end table. She picks it up, heart squeezing pleasantly. This is a good surprise.

“Well, what do you think?” He says, and she spins to see him twisting his jacket in his hands. He is nervous, and it’s adorable.

“You got your own place?” She asks, and even she can hear the incredulous delight in her tone. Finn stands up taller and sets his coat down on top of hers, moves to stand next to her. He puts his hands on her hips, and turns her to face towards the bookshelf, wraps his arms around her from behind and rests his chin on her shoulder. A shiver runs down her spine, and she thinks that they’re really alone for the first time in months.

Finn brushes back her hair and runs his dry lips over her neck. “Our place.”

A pleasant warmth is spreading through her at the feeling of his lips on her skin, at the thought of the uninhabited hours that they’re to enjoy, so she doesn’t notice at first what he’s said. But slowly it sinks in. That Radiohead poster, that’s her poster. Those thin paperbacks on the shelf, those are hers. There’s a bloody troll doll on the coffee table, her worn flannel on a hook by the door. Our place. Their place.

“What?” She says, jerking out of his arms. “What?”

He doesn’t seem to get her alarm, doesn’t seem to notice anything amiss. He steps forward to touch her waist again, a sly, sexy grin still gracing his face. He’s beautiful and she’s panicking and he’s got no idea.

“It’s our place, Rae.” He angles his torso back, presses his hips against hers firmly. “When you come home for the summer, this will be the home you’re coming to. I got it all sorted with your Mum. I got your stuff out of storage and everything. Welcome home, Miss Earl.”

She feels like she’s shaking, like he should be able to feel it, so she twists away and walks jerkily towards the open bedroom door. She’s a marionette, a girl controlled by panic and anxiety, a crude facsimile of herself. She stares at his big bed, her old Care Bears duvet folded carefully over the foot. There’s an open wardrobe, in which she can make out the lines of all the shirts she’d found subpar to take with her to university. She can see everything in sparkling detail, but it’s somehow a big blur rushing at her with incredible force. In her head, she can see Finn, hips jutting cockily, flushed with the success of his plan to trap her here.

It’s worse than a proposal. That would be a tether to Finn, a tie that could pull him through into her new life. This… this is a shackle, bolting her down to everything she doesn’t want to be anymore. He’s caged her, forced her to forever return to being Stamford Rae.

They’d talked about living together over the summer, talked vaguely in abstracts about their life together. But she’d always assumed that if they did survive the year together, he’d come up to Manchester with her. Not this. She never considered this. The idea of fitting the new bigger version of herself into this same sized space is intolerable. She feels like she might break out of her skin with the very thought of it.

“Rae?” Finn asks from behind her, worry coloring his voice. She realizes that she’s been standing, frozen, for a long time. She looks down at her hands, half expecting to see them icy blue like in her imaginings. But they’re normal, pale and pink and plump. They’re not even shaking.

“I can’t. Oh my God, I can’t.” She hears herself say. Something in her snaps, and she spins around, no longer frozen, but wild and tremulous. The color has drained from Finn’s face. He opens his mouth. Nothing emerges.

They stand there for another impossibly long moment before she grabs her jacket and her purse and bolts out the front door.

—

It’s less than an hour before he finds her. Which makes sense, as she was on foot and just walked rapidly to the nearest motel. It’s shitty, grimy and dingy and awful. She’s been perched on the edge of the bed for the last forty minutes, staring at a stain on the wall where water has bled through the wallpaper and discolored it. She hasn’t bothered to turn the lights on, so it’s all different shades of blue-gray.

She knows it’s him as soon as she hears the knock. She wipes at her cheeks, but she’s not even crying. She’s nothing, just floating in an endless void with nothing to tie her to reality. Her legs don’t feel like hers when she stands; even her body has deserted her.

It’s sleeting when she opens the door. Finn is drenched and shivering, his mouth a grim line below agonized eyes. The strange illuminated pale grey of the cloudy night seeps into the room like a fog, so she pulls him in and shuts the door, sealing them back into the darkness. They don’t talk as she strips his sodden jacket from his shoulders, but she clucks when she sees that the moisture has soaked through the fabric. She tugs off his flannel, peels his shirt over his head. He’s motionless as she undoes his belt and pulls down his wet jeans and boxers. He helps by toeing off his trainers and stepping out of his pants.

Rae turns the bathroom light on and runs a hot shower. He watches, silent and shaking, until she pushes him under the steaming water. She turns to leave, but his hand clutches at her sleeve until she lifts her eyes to his. He looks haunted, pale and ghostly, the water flattening his hair into a dark cap over his skull.

“Alright.” She says, and when he doesn’t release her, she adds, “Just let me turn the heat up first.”

She expects that she’ll need the escape, need a moment to stand in front of the thermometer and collect herself before facing him. But she doesn’t. She clicks the dial on, then strips quickly in the bedroom.

The bathroom is filled with steam already when she returns, and everything is still and silent around the sound of the dripping water. She pulls back the curtain, steps into the tiny shower, and for an excruciating moment, Finn doesn’t turn to her. He keeps his back to her, and she has to clench her fists to keep from touching him.

“I don’t understand, Rae.” He says when he finally turns towards her, and this is when she lets her fingers skate over his arms.

“I know.” She feels helpless, hopeless. “I don’t really understand either.”

“You’re so far.” He groans, and she can’t tell if he’s crying with the water streaming down his face. She’s grateful, so grateful that she doesn’t know for sure. The water is hot, and his face is red, and she doesn’t know if she’s crying either. “You don’t write, you barely call, and I did this thing for us… for us! And you just take off.”

“I know, Finn. I know.” She knows she’s crying now.

“Do you still love me?” His breath catches, and she pulls him into her arms. He stays stiff.

“Yes! I love you so much! I do!” His head droops, his forehead pressed against her shoulder. She flattens her palms over his back and thinks about how vulnerable he is in this moment, how utterly naked he’s made himself to her. She pleads, prays one more time to whoever might hear her.  _Please don’t let me destroy him._

He pulls back to look at her, pushes back the hair that hangs in sopping chunks over her face and presses his hands hot against her cheeks. She worries for a second that he intends to squeeze her face in until she bursts. “Tell me you love me.”

“I love you.” She says, wrapping her hands around his, still tight over her cheeks. He releases her, and she moves his hands to her sides, runs her palms over his chest and down his stomach. She looks him in the eyes and repeats the words, one hand over his heart. His fingers clutch her hips roughly. She leans forward to kiss his chest, his eyelid, his shoulder. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

Somewhere around the tenth I love you, his mouth overtakes the words and the heat overtakes all the things she’s not saying.

—

She’s turned the heat on too high, and their bodies are a mess of dampness from the shower and their sweat. It’s nearly three when she wakes up to turn it down. She puts on her knickers and t-shirt from earlier, despite the heat. She’s had another nightmare, and she’s feeling exposed and uncomfortable with Finn beside her. He wakes up with the shifting of the bed as she fights with the blankets, trying to extricate the sheet.  He picks up his clothes and goes to the bathroom, returning in his boxers.

“You should put your jacket over the heater.” She says softly, and he makes a noise of agreement as he carefully spreads his clothes out over the plastic box.

He climbs back into the bed, but doesn’t lie down. He sits with his back propped against the laminated motel headboard and turns to look at her. His eyes look owlish in the darkness.

“What happened?” He says, and she feels disappointed in herself for doing this to him. All that bubbly joy from earlier, drained down to nothing, to the seediness of 3am in a borrowed room. She has the scary thought that he looks lonely even with her beside him. She’s ruining this beautiful boy.

How can she explain? What could she possibly say to convey the sickening dread that’s plagued her all semester? How could she tell him everything she doesn’t want and live with the look on his face?

Abruptly, she’s aware that she’s exhausted. It’d been a marathon of finals, then the train ride and all the anxiety, then the walk in the cold and the sex. It’s late and she absolutely cannot bear to face this hard conversation right now.

“I’m so tired, Finn.” She whispers, brushing at the tears escaping her fatigued eyes. She wants to see the tightness of his jaw soften, wants to see him let go in some perceptible way, but it’s too dark. “Please. I’m so tired, and I’m finally home. Can’t we do this tomorrow?”

He’s quiet for a long minute, and Rae starts to fade into the haze of sleep.

“This isn’t home.”

“Just for tonight.” She pleads, reaching to tug at his hand until he’s lying beside her. “Please.”

Finn sighs, but allows her to wrap herself around him until her head is on his chest and her arm is trapped between them. He sighs again, and it sounds like the wind. Before she drifts off to sleep, Rae wonders if people like her just don’t have homes.

—

**_Tonight I will love you forever._ **

As it turns out, nothing lasts. Archie and his band break up in February. Chloe changes her major no less than three times the first year. Chop and Izzy split after he calls one of her art school mates a poncer. She’s dating the poncer within a fortnight. Izzy confesses on the phone that she’s relieved, that Chop didn’t fit in amongst her carefully curated life of Seurat and Vermeer. He’s a Pollock, and she’s strictly European art before 1900. Finn tells her over the phone that Chop gets bladdered every night and has been written up twice at work.

It makes her uneasy, this blatant dichotomy. She calls Finn three times a week, at least.

She’s only been home twice this semester- well, home to Stamford, anyway. Both times had been to babysit Mari, and she’d stayed at her Mums. Finn came up to stay with her over spring break, took a week’s vacation to sleep crowded up with her in her tiny single bed. All her friends had gone away, her roommate included, and it had just been the two of them. It seemed like they were the only two people at the University. They’d wandered aimlessly around campus, made out in the library stacks, sipped bad coffee in the deserted canteen, sat in empty desks in empty buildings. It was a strange blend, Finn there in her new world, her new life, but only when it had become a ghost town.

After dark, they’d ventured into the city and had romantic candlelit dinners in tiny out of the way restaurants that she’d never been to. She’d taken him to her favorite pubs, where he’d ordered a new beer he’d discovered and nodded at the jukebox without commenting. They’d gone to the cinema, stood outside famous local landmarks, puttered around in all the cool shops. And they’d made love like they were the first people to discover it.

It was the best week of her life. Their renaissance, their honeymoon before getting married. She’d never wanted to let go.

They both cried at the train station, stayed on the phone that night long after they’d run out of things to say, until it was just the soft sounds of his breathing as he slept. That’s the first night that she sees the phone for what it is, a line that lifts both of them up and out to a shared third space that’s just theirs. Another thread in the web they’re weaving of them, the strongest one they’ve got at the moment.

Rae adjusts her skirt, the fancy maroon thing she’ll probably never wear again, but that she’d forgone two weeks worth of takeaway to afford. She’s pretty sure she looks nice, and she wants to look nice for him tonight.

Gary’d called her two weeks ago, straightforward and ready to plan out the details. She’d have to be on the train by three at the latest, would she be able to make it? It’s a Thursday, so she might have to skip her afternoon class. Does she think her Mum and Karim will want to come to the celebratory dinner, assuming it was in Stamford? She’d drive back from Milton Keynes with them, of course. Did she want him to buy her return ticket for the next morning, or would she stay the weekend?

It had all been very abrupt and confusing, and she’d had to say his name four times before she could get his attention long enough to ask what the bloody hell he was talking about. And then he’d said it, and then it was him saying her name over and over to bring her back.  _Finn’s graduation, of course._  Of course, of course.

While she’s been busy guiltily living her life in Manchester, Finn’s been busy living his own. At the business school at Stamford College, apparently. It’s shocking, when she hears it. Shocking that Finn’s had a whole second life that she knew nothing about, shocking that he’s been going to school in secret for the last year. She’d been stunned, then pissed, then impressed, then pissed again before she’d settled on something unexpected: proud. He’s been going to school and working and apparently doing really well and good Lord, she’s so proud of him.

So she’d convinced Gary not to say anything, to keep it secret and let her presence at Finn’s graduation be a surprise. She’s still got a couple of weeks left in the semester, a really bad time to be skipping classes for a day and a half, but she can’t really bring herself to care. Tonight, all she cares about is Finn.

—

The train is fifteen minutes late, and Gary tries unsuccessfully to hide his harried expression as he greets her at the station. Still, she hugs him for an extra long moment, until his stiffness softens with an exhale. It’s partially an apology for treating his son so abysmally this year, for not even knowing that Finn was in school. But mostly, she’s just missed him. He smells the same, like aftershave and coffee and tobacco.

He grins at her when she pulls away, knocks her chin with his knuckle. “Alright, chuck? It’s been too long.”

“Long enough for you to go gray!” She laughs, reaching up to rub her palm over the barely perceptible stubble on his head. “I can see why you’ve been shaving it.”

“Oi! I see Manchester has ruined the lovely young woman I once knew!” He laughs, and the way his mouth folds up is just like Finn. Rae hugs him again. “Alright, alright. Enough of that. You’ll spoil me. And we’ll be late.”

He’s blushing. She’s made Gary blush. That alone is worth the missed lectures.

—

Finn’s wearing a suit. It’s black and well-fitting and obviously new. He needs a haircut, but it’s combed to the side, over part of his forehead. Long, but neat. He looks manly, masculine and grown up. Dashing even. Her mouth literally waters when she sees him.

They’d arrived just as the ceremony started, and she’d ducked into the back row until Gary clucked at her and jerked toward the front, holding his camera before him. She’d been embarrassed as they crouched down, apologizing repeatedly while they clambered over a dozen people to get to the two empty seats in the middle of the third row. Rae’d immediately regretted the balloons and posterboard sign she’d brought. Still, she’d met the nasty middle aged woman eying her scowl for scowl.

Gary snaps half a dozen pictures of Finn just sitting on the small stage, and Rae struggles to pay attention to the speaker when she’s got her very sexy suit-wearing boyfriend to ogle. She’d be taking tons of pictures herself if she’d thought to bring her camera. She can’t keep her eyes off of him. It’s the first time she’s seen him since she’s learned about school, and though she knows it’s just her imagination, he looks different. He seems taller, or maybe like he’s sitting up straighter. His jaw line looks sharper, his shoulders broader. He looks like her Finn, only more. She shivers in her seat.

Finn tosses his head to shake his fringe from his face. It’s an achingly familiar gesture, one she’s seen a million times, and something about seeing this vestige of the boy she’d fallen in love with all those years ago on this new Finn makes her breath catch. And that’s when she knows.

This whole year, she’s been fighting with whether or not she can hang on to Finn while becoming the person she’s meant to be. She’s struggled again and again with whether or not Stamford Finn can fit into the life of Manchester Rae. It’s a puzzle she can’t figure out, the inscrutable quantum physics of her life. She’s changed the variables, approached it from different angles, tried a thousand different possible alternatives… and still the solution has eluded her. It’s always been one or the other; a choice between here and there, then and now, him and her.

But sitting here, in this foreign building watching this foreign man accept accolades for something she’d been no part of, had no idea of… suddenly it’s easy. It’s barely even a choice.

It’s Finn. Always and only Finn. Forever.

Tears sting her eyes, and she looks down at her lap to hide them. She clears her throat, trying to fight back the sobs that seem to be caught in her lungs. She feels so foolish, so selfish. She’d hurt him so much in the turmoil of choosing, when really it should have been clear from the start.

Gary reaches for her hand, and she looks up to see tears in his eyes as well. She smiles weakly at him, and for an instant they’re sharing the same beaming, radiant pride in the boy they love. He snaps a picture of her before she knows what’s happening, and then laughs when she makes a face. Together they turn back to the stage.

It’s not a real graduation, it turns out, regardless of what Gary had said. It’s a promotion ceremony for the students in the Foundation Entry program, which she learns is to help students transition into bigger Universities.  The program director beams as she lists off the successes of the students- acceptance into Cardiff, the University of Glasgow, Leeds Beckett, the University of Manchester and several others that Rae doesn’t hear. She can’t hear anything over the pounding of her own heart. The University of Manchester. She turns shocked eyes to Gary, who gives her another tearful grin and wraps an arm around her shoulders.

The University of Manchester.

Soon the program director is calling names, and a line of well-dressed men and women move forward to shake her hand and accept a paper certificate. Finn’s halfway through the group, and Rae rises to her feel with a loud cheer when they call his name. He turns towards her at the sound, and the look he gives her makes her fall back into her seat with shaky knees, it’s so full. Gary snaps a dozen pictures, and Rae thinks idly that she hopes he got a picture of Finn’s face just then, as incontrovertible evidence that he loves her that much in that moment.

The rest of the evening passes in a blur, and when she looks back in the following days, she only remembers snapshots, like she’d been the one with the camera. She’ll recall the toes of her one pair of fancy shoes, how she’d tapped them against the coarse patterned carpet as she’d nervously waited against a wall for Finn to emerge from the sea of bodies. The card Mari’d made for Finn, colorful scribbles on a piece of red paper, and the way he’d touched his chest with tears in his eyes. Karim and Gary shaking hands and clapping each other on the back.  Finn mid-laugh in the chair tucked close beside her, still in his suit jacket, one arm stretched across the back of her chair and the other raising a beer in a green glass bottle. The cake her Mum had brought, baked and not store bought, a crooked configuration of chocolate frosting and sugared coconut. Finn waiting for her beside their empty table at the restaurant, hands in his pockets and a soft smile on his lips. Finn’s hand holding hers across the gearshift in his car. Finn’s eyes, hot on hers as they stepped into his empty flat. Finn’s red cheeks, Finn’s discarded tie, Finn’s bare skin, Finn Finn Finn Finn.

Always and forever Finn.

—

He’s got fairy lights strung up above the curtain rod in his bedroom. She finds them baffling and almost unbearably endearing. They make the light soft and pastel, almost like candlelight, but steadier. They make him look warm and glowing, but then again, he is warm and glowing.

They haven’t stopped touching since he’d wrapped her in his arms after the ceremony, except for the few minutes when she’d gone to the loo. They’re lying on their sides, heads on separate pillows, facing each other. He keeps running his fingers through the hair at her temple, keeps gliding his thumb over her cheekbone. She moves her feet back and forth against his, just to feel his skin slide over hers. He’s smiling like he did in her dorm room, like nothing exists but them, like they have all the time in the world.

She supposes they do.

She pulls his hand down between their bodies, moves her fingertips over the ridges in his palm. He makes a soft noise, something like a contented sigh. She smiles, watches his eyelids flutter and his lips curve. He’s got the faintest traces of stubble on his jaw, and she thinks that she’s awed by him. He’s a man now.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” She whispers, and his eyes open and lock on hers. He shifts just a fraction closer, though their foreheads were already almost touching.

“I don’t know.” He shrugs, his bare shoulder moving above the sheet. “It wasn’t a big deal.”

Rae’s eyebrows furrow. “It’s a huge deal.  You did this big, amazing thing and you never said anything about it.”

Finn sighs, and she thinks it sounds almost defeated. There’s silence for a while as he examines her face. She finds herself blushing under his gaze; though it’s gentle and warm, she knows there’s lots of guilt to find in her eyes. Finally, he smiles sorrowfully. “I think there’s lots of things that you haven’t been talking to me about too.”

She bows her head in shame, ceases the movement of her fingers in his hand. When she looks up, his eyes on her face are soft and sympathetic, but she can see all the hurt there, all the injuries she’s inflicted this year with her half-truths and pointed omissions. No more. It’s Finn, and she’s going to have to tell him the truth even if it’s hard, even if it hurts him.

He waits for her to gather her thoughts, to work around the lump in her throat. Finn always waits for her.  She takes a deep breath, lets out a shaky gust of air, and gives in.

“I like who I am in Manchester, Finn. Getting out of Stamford is all I’ve ever wanted. There’s too much here, it’s full of all the horrible things that have happened to me, all the mistakes that I’ve made. I don’t want to walk down the streets where people taunted me so much that I believed I was worthless. I don’t want to ride the bus near the neighborhood of the Dad who didn’t give a shit about me. I don’t want to see the school where I was tormented, the hospital where I was locked up, the cemetery where Tix is. I can’t. Stamford is too small for me, and Manchester is so big… I’m tiny there. I’m new.

Leaving was all I ever wanted, but then I met you. And then you were all I ever wanted. And it’s been hard this year, because I didn’t know how to be both things, how to want both things. Because I want you so much, I love you so much, but that’s Stamford Rae. To have you, I have to be Stamford Rae. And I really don’t want to be Stamford Rae anymore. I couldn’t work out how to have both things, how to have you and be me. I didn’t want to have to choose.”

She’s crying now, and Finn wraps her up in his arms, murmuring plaintive comforts. She cries against his bare skin, nuzzling her nose against his warmth, arms tight around his back. She buries her face in him so she doesn’t have to see his tortured expression, doesn’t have to see the pain that she’s always inflicting on him. All she ever does is hurt him.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” She mutters into his skin, her tears a film between them. “I wanted to pick you, I did, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t pick anything. I was completely paralyzed and I didn’t know how to handle it. I know it was unfair to you, and I’m so sorry. It should have been easy to pick you, of course I want to pick you. I just didn’t want to have to choose.”

She presses her nose hard against his chest, rocks her head back and forth. Finn makes a strangled sound, and Rae’s breath catches on a sob. She knows she’s wounding him, knows that if it was him picking, it wouldn’t have even been a problem.

“I wanted to go with you.” He moans, and she pulls back to see him crying too. She wipes his tears away with all of her trembling fingertips, and he shifts to press his forehead against hers. His breath is warm against her damp cheeks. “I wanted to go with you so bad. I applied to Manchester last fall, but I didn’t get in.”

“Oh Finn. You should have told me.”

“I couldn’t. You were so happy, Rae. You were so happy, and I couldn’t bear to take away from that, even a little bit. I was so proud of you, I am so proud of you,” he says, eyebrows lifting as he reaches to wrap his fingers in her hair, “and I just wanted you to feel all of that. And I was embarrassed. I wanted to keep up with you, and I couldn’t. But then my Dad found out about the Foundation entry thing, and I signed up. But… I didn’t know if I could do it, you know? I’ve never been great at school, and I didn’t want to tell you and get your hopes all up, just in case I wasn’t smart enough to do it.”

“You’re smart, so smart. I hate when you talk about yourself that way, of course you can do it. You can do anything.” She frowns at him, stern and tender.

“Well, I know that now.” He grins roguishly, and she laughs in relief. “Turns out that I was always just crap at school because I never gave a shit. When I actually put in a little effort, I’m pretty fuckin’ smart after all.”

“Imagine that, Finn Nelson having to try.” Rae chuckles.

“I do more trying than you think. You’re a constant effort.” He retorts dryly.

“Hey!” She scowls. Finn laughs, and Rae realizes that that’s it, all their terrible truths are out there. She’s told him all the things she’s had locked up in her, choking her, for the last nine months. She takes her first clean breath in ages, then props herself up on an elbow to lean over Finn. He smiles at her, and she kisses him softly, a careful brush of her mouth against his, as weightless as she feels.

“I’m sorry.” She says, watching his eyes shift in the light. “I should have just told you from the beginning that I was worried about it. I didn’t want to hurt you.”

“It’s okay.” He breathes back, twisting to wriggle his arm beneath her side and pull her down onto his chest. “I was scared too. I’m still scared. This thing with you… Rae, you’re my whole life. You’re my future. I know that we’re young too young to,” he takes a deep breath and speaks the words into the crown of her head, “to get married, but I would. I will. Someday.”

She presses a kiss just above his nipple; silent confirmation, tacit acceptance. She thinks guiltily of her nightmare and nuzzles closer to chase it away.

“But my point is, you’re it.” He pronounces, and it feels certain and weighty in the stillness of his bedroom. Their bedroom. It’s somehow easier to think of this as their flat when she knows for sure that she gets to have him. “Where you go, I go.”

Rae smiles. “Manchester then?”

“Manchester.”

She feels him nod from her place on his chest. A peaceful quiet falls between them, Finn absently running his fingers up and down the expanse of her back. Rae lets her mind wander without restriction. She thinks of the fairy lights he’d put around the caravan that night so long ago, when her fear had caused her to miss out on something great. She thinks of sneaking into one of the bedrooms at Chloe’s graduation party after they’d had enough drinks to not be bothered by the masses of people just below them. She thinks of the hotel room before she left for Uni, and the nights they’d spent in her dorm room.

“What’ll we do about the flat? Didn’t you sign for a year?” She asks, and Finn mumbles incoherently before replying. She wonders if she’s pulling him back from the edge of sleep.

“Oh, uh, Chop said he’d take over the lease when we were ready.”

“The semester is over in two weeks. That’s not much time to find a place in the city.” She says, worrying her lip. Now that she knows that this isn’t permanent, that this is just another temporary bed, she finds herself reluctant to relinquish this quiet little apartment that she’s hardly spent any time in.

“Well, we could do that.” His voice sounds careful, and Rae wriggles to look at him. “But I was thinking that maybe we could stay here for the summer. I know you don’t like Stamford, but a lot of good stuff’s happened here too. We met here, and Mari and your Mum are here. I bet you’d like to spend some time with them over the summer. Plus Archie will be home in a couple of weeks. And Izzy.”

“Chloe, too.” She murmurs, and he smiles, sensing that he’s winning.

“So we’d have the whole gang together. It could be another summer like that first one, the one we fell in love.”

“You didn’t love me that summer!” She protests through a grin, knowing she’ll give him this one. “You didn’t even like me then.”

“I did, too. I loved you right away, I just didn’t know it for a long time.” She exaggerates her skeptical face, hoping to make him laugh, grins when he does. “A looong time. Besides, that way I can work through the summer, save some more money, and we’ll have time to look for a decent place.”

She fakes him out for a bit, stares at him until his expression turns pleading, then concedes. “Alright. Stamford for the summer, Manchester in the fall.”

“Good.” He says, reaching over to seal the bargain with a kiss. Or kisses, really.

After a long, sizzling minute, something occurs to Rae, and she pulls back. Finn hovers over her, eyes hazy and half-lidded. She puts a hand on his cheek, waits until he blinks and his eyes clear.

“Hey. I’m really proud of you.” She says tenderly. Finn smiles and nuzzles his nose against hers. “I think you’re clever and amazing and I can’t believe you never once whinged about school work to me.”

He laughs, but it’s muted and hazy, like the dimness around them. Rae grins back, feeling content and hopeful for the first time in a long while.

“And I think you looked unbelievably hot in that suit. It put all sorts of sexy businessman fantasies in my head.  What do you think about putting it back on and I can be your naughty secretary?”

Finn smiles his gooey, delighted smile at her, and Rae can’t help but think of his face on the stage earlier in the night, when his love for her had radiated like a beacon through the auditorium. She thinks that it’s him who’s gotten them through this year, him who has pulled the threads to bend and fold the distance and keep them together. She’s still the same Rae, never able to make it on her own. But thankfully, miraculously, she doesn’t have to.

He bends and kisses her again and again and again until they bleed into forever.


End file.
